Jordan
Peele (actor, writer, and one half of Key & Peele—the best
sketch comedy series of the young millennium) makes a stunning directorial
début with the low-budget horror thriller Get Out. Daniel
Kaluuya and Allison Williams star as Chris and Rose, a young,
interracial couple from Brooklyn. As the story begins, Rose is bringing
Chris to meet her parents, in the affluent suburb where she grew up, and Chris
is concerned that she hasn’t yet told them that he’s black. Based on everything
Peele has done thus far in his career, we might expect this premise to result
in an amusing but disposable comedy like Meet the Parents, told
from an African-American perspective. But we’d be dead wrong. Get
Out is a horror movie—not a horror movie spoof but a genuinely scary
and unsettling horror thriller, through and through.

Peele,
who never even directed sketches for his TV show, delivers scares and
intelligent subtext better than most seasoned horror feature directors in
recent decades. As both a writer and director, Peele is clearly a student of
cinema. Get Out takes inspiration from a wide range of
cinematic influences like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The
Stepford Wives (1975), Halloween (1978), The
Shining (1980), and Funny Games (1997)—but it never
pays overt homage to any of these pictures. Rather it strikes a chilling tone
from the very beginning via adept visual compositions and the slightly odd
behavior of each character Chris and Rose encounter. Like the great
filmmakers he draws from, Peele interweaves multiple layers of complex social
satire, criticism, and elucidation into his narrative. Get Out examines
issues of race with the same canny underhanded directness that Rosemary’s
Baby scrutinizes gender.

Written
and produced during the Obama years, the film exposes the lie that America is
in a post-racial era. The racial commentary within Get Out extends
far beyond simplistic metaphors by deftly placing the viewer into the mind
of the film’s black protagonist. Regardless of our ethnic make-up, we live this
story through Chris. And, as with all good horror movies, we understand the
main character’s motivations, conflicts, and fears, and connect viscerally and
personally with him, while we simultaneously have the heightened awareness that
we’re watching a horror movie, and that every warning sign Chris might
legitimately dismiss we know should be heeded. In this way, and through the
astute use of Chris’s best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery)—ostensibly just the
comic relief—Peele also makes sly observations about the black experience
of watching horror movies. The title itself, which can be
interpreted several ways, may be a reference to an old Eddie Murphy routine
about why there are never any horror movies about black people, even though
they have historically been one of the most loyal and dependable audiences for
this genre.

Get
Out is a
rare contemporary horror film with a fully satisfying third act. It’s both a
shrewd work of political and social satire and a terrific, creepy, bloody,
thriller—full of genuine surprises and intricate set-ups that pay off handsomely.
But perhaps what’s most remarkable is how suburban multiplex audiences of nearly all
backgrounds will undoubtedly cheer on the actions of the main character. Peele
and his producers don’t hold back in this regard—in fact they delight in the
“get whitey!” aesthetic of the climax. And unlike Quentin Tarantino’s Django
Unchained (2012), the white villains of Get Out are
not broad caricatures of old southern plantation owners and easy-to-hate slave
masters but respectable East Coast liberal elite types
who fancy themselves part of the solution to racism rather than indicative of
the problem. Incendiary and insightful but most of all wickedly entertaining,
Jordan Peele’s first feature is a perfect example of how good genre pictures
can often accomplish much more than even the most well intentioned issue drama.

Twitter Capsule:Peele’s accomplished directorial début is genuinely chilling, insightful, and fun. And the more times you see it more impressive it is.

★★★★★
One of the 5000 greatest films. Usually only awarded after repeat viewings, so there are more five-star films from decades past than recent years.

★★★★&star;
An excellent film. Possibly one of the 5000 and certainly worthy of repeated viewing.

★★★&star;&star;
A good film well worth seeing. Films listed at the top of this ranking could end up one of the 5000.

★★&star;&star;&star;
A disappointment, an interesting failure, or just a bad movie. Still, maybe worth seeing: I often enjoy the top two-star films in a given list more than the bottom three-star films.

★&star;&star;&star;&star;
A bad, rant-worthy film. Should be avoided regardless of hype or talent involved.

&star;&star;&star;&star;&star;
One of the worst films.

Annotations Key

Film from the previous year released this year

Seen during film's original release

Seen more than once

Seen more than twenty times

Film Formats:

Digital Formats:

Home Formats:

Screening Context:

Theater/Cinema

Screening Room

TV/Portable Device

Drive In

Airline

Cinerama

3D

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Site design by Raj Kottamasu and built by Matthew Skomarovsky
Editorial support from Martha Bustin, Ellen Epstein, Josh Kratka & Zach Sherwin

Jordan
Peele (actor, writer, and one half of Key & Peele—the best
sketch comedy series of the young millennium) makes a stunning directorial
début with the low-budget horror thriller Get Out. Daniel
Kaluuya and Allison Williams star as Chris and Rose, a young,
interracial couple from Brooklyn. As the story begins, Rose is bringing
Chris to meet her parents, in the affluent suburb where she grew up, and Chris
is concerned that she hasn’t yet told them that he’s black. Based on everything
Peele has done thus far in his career, we might expect this premise to result
in an amusing but disposable comedy like Meet the Parents, told
from an African-American perspective. But we’d be dead wrong. Get
Out is a horror movie—not a horror movie spoof but a genuinely scary
and unsettling horror thriller, through and through.

Peele,
who never even directed sketches for his TV show, delivers scares and
intelligent subtext better than most seasoned horror feature directors in
recent decades. As both a writer and director, Peele is clearly a student of
cinema. Get Out takes inspiration from a wide range of
cinematic influences like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The
Stepford Wives (1975), Halloween (1978), The
Shining (1980), and Funny Games (1997)—but it never
pays overt homage to any of these pictures. Rather it strikes a chilling tone
from the very beginning via adept visual compositions and the slightly odd
behavior of each character Chris and Rose encounter. Like the great
filmmakers he draws from, Peele interweaves multiple layers of complex social
satire, criticism, and elucidation into his narrative. Get Out examines
issues of race with the same canny underhanded directness that Rosemary’s
Baby scrutinizes gender.

Written
and produced during the Obama years, the film exposes the lie that America is
in a post-racial era. The racial commentary within Get Out extends
far beyond simplistic metaphors by deftly placing the viewer into the mind
of the film’s black protagonist. Regardless of our ethnic make-up, we live this
story through Chris. And, as with all good horror movies, we understand the
main character’s motivations, conflicts, and fears, and connect viscerally and
personally with him, while we simultaneously have the heightened awareness that
we’re watching a horror movie, and that every warning sign Chris might
legitimately dismiss we know should be heeded. In this way, and through the
astute use of Chris’s best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery)—ostensibly just the
comic relief—Peele also makes sly observations about the black experience
of watching horror movies. The title itself, which can be
interpreted several ways, may be a reference to an old Eddie Murphy routine
about why there are never any horror movies about black people, even though
they have historically been one of the most loyal and dependable audiences for
this genre.

Get
Out is a
rare contemporary horror film with a fully satisfying third act. It’s both a
shrewd work of political and social satire and a terrific, creepy, bloody,
thriller—full of genuine surprises and intricate set-ups that pay off handsomely.
But perhaps what’s most remarkable is how suburban multiplex audiences of nearly all
backgrounds will undoubtedly cheer on the actions of the main character. Peele
and his producers don’t hold back in this regard—in fact they delight in the
“get whitey!” aesthetic of the climax. And unlike Quentin Tarantino’s Django
Unchained (2012), the white villains of Get Out are
not broad caricatures of old southern plantation owners and easy-to-hate slave
masters but respectable East Coast liberal elite types
who fancy themselves part of the solution to racism rather than indicative of
the problem. Incendiary and insightful but most of all wickedly entertaining,
Jordan Peele’s first feature is a perfect example of how good genre pictures
can often accomplish much more than even the most well intentioned issue drama.

Twitter Capsule:Peele’s accomplished directorial début is genuinely chilling, insightful, and fun. And the more times you see it more impressive it is.